Monday, September 08, 2008
Oil and war mix well
From the RoundTable blog
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Michael Abraham
Abraham is a businessman and writer who lives in Blacksburg.
John McCain repeatedly claims Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is the "transcendental challenge of the 21st century." While few can argue that Islamic terrorism isn't serious, McCain is wrong. Other challenges are more insidious, indigenous and intractable.
Our world is entering an energy crisis of epic proportions. Nonrenewable fossil fuels have provided the energy for two centuries of unprecedented growth and prosperity. Oil is pre-eminent; however, the peak in international oil extraction is nigh. The Government Accountability Office last year warned that a precipitous decline "would require sharp reductions in oil consumption," driving prices "possibly to unprecedented levels, causing severe economic damage. While these consequences would be felt globally, the United States, as the largest consumer of oil and one of the nations most heavily dependent on oil for transportation, may be especially vulnerable."
Energy will be one of the transcendental challenges of the 21st century. Coincidentally, the U.S. military-industrial complex has come to increasingly shape international order. Leaders from Jefferson to Lincoln, Roosevelt to Eisenhower, warned about the excessive reach of corporate power. Instead of a necessary tension between government and industry, we have a honeymoon. In the Bush administration, the wholesale embrace of the profit exigency of Halliburton, Exxon, Boeing and other multinational corporations has driven foreign policy and domestic spending.
Warmongers know militarism is good business. While the rest of us bemoan the needless waste of lives, money and resources, the war and oil industries are two of the few segments of our society raking in the dough. Of all the money spent worldwide on militarism, more than half is American. At an unfathomable cost, we maintain more than 700 military bases around the world, of which scores are in the Middle East. Benevolent intentions or not, their very presence fuels the enmity that incites terrorism.
The Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war has placed our nation on an indefinite war footing -- ironically, without the personal sacrifice asked of the citizenry in previous wars. New wars are designed not to be won, but to be just large enough to stress our professional military beyond their capabilities and enrich defense contractors while not interrupting the consumer class back home from its consumption bacchanal. Meanwhile, our enemies are enraged, wary of our next unprovoked misadventure, and our allies are frustrated by our truculence and insularity.
Nobody can doubt that our invasion and occupation of Iraq are about strengthening the hegemonic presence of the United States in the vital, oil-rich Middle East. Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman at the time Bush launched his war on Iraq, admitted understatedly, "The Iraq war is largely about oil." Certainly our government's commitment to protecting our access to the Middle East's oil is clear -- the United States consumes 20 percent of the world's production. Given our government's utter failure to develop an energy policy that would wean us from oil, we are now funding both sides of the conflict, ensuring perpetual strife.
Interestingly, the world's foremost consumer of oil is our own Defense Department, which is waging wars to provide access to the fuel it needs to wage wars. Last year, the average American soldier in the Middle East consumed, directly or indirectly, 16 gallons of oil per day. Without oil, our consumer society will grind to a halt, and so will our military.
Major Gen. Smedley Butler, who, when he died in 1940, was the most decorated Marine in history, knew the score: "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. ... I spent most of my time [in military service] as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."
Our nation has instigated the overthrow of governments in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Chile, Iran and Grenada, none of which formed a democratic government as a direct result.
Imagine the benefits of redirecting the enormous expenditure now spent on our war machine toward the health and well-being of our citizens. Reining in military-industrial power is the second transcendental challenge of the 21st century.
And then there's global warming, overpopulation, mass species extinction, infectious diseases and on and on. Islamic fundamentalist terrorism will only become the transcendental challenge of the 21st century if we make it so.
If McCain is elected president, endless war will be our future. His obsession with Islam and militarism will bankrupt our nation and imperil the world, my friends.
